TANAKA Yoshihiko, M.D. Ph.D.

Dr. Tanaka received his M.D. from the Faculty of Medicine, the Kumamoto University in 1991. He did his residency work as a surgeon at the Kumamoto University in the Second Department of Surgery, for four years. He then received his Ph.D. in Immunology from the Kumamoto University Graduate School of Medical Sciences in 1999. Dr. Tanaka did his postdoctoral training from 1999 to 2003 at the La Jolla Institute for Allergy and Immunology, US, and became a Research Scientist in 2003. In 2004, he moved to the Medical Institute of Bioregulation, Kyushu University as an Assistant Professor and was appointed as an Associated Professor in 2008. In September 2013, he was appointed as the Professor of Section of Infection Biology, Division of Functional Bioscience, the Fukuoka Dental College.
Dr. Tanaka has a lot of clinical experience in the fields of infection, autoimmune disease and malignant tumor on various medical situations including emergency medical care and remote medical care. Based on those experiences, he has come to think that the progress of basic medicine is necessary for the development of modern medicine and that was the reason he started research works on immunology. He specializes in Immunology and Cell Biology and has investigated signal transductions and immune responses of T cells and dendritic cells based on the study of the interaction between MHC/peptide and T cell receptor (TCR). He aims to elucidate the mechanism of how immune system cells are controlled at individual, tissue, cellular, molecular and gene levels based on the analyses of signaling cascades.
Making use of Dr. Tanaka’s substantial experiences as both a clinician and a basic medicine researcher, he puts efforts into teaching, in order for the students to acquire the ability to deal with the problems concerned with oral medicine accurately by both fundamental and practical medical approaches.

Research Focus
1.Investigation of the immune system in oral infectious diseases.
2.Regulation of G-protein signal transduction in the migration and differentiation of immune cells.
3.Molecular mechanisms of a novel signaling protein in allergic responses.
4.Functional analysis of an intranuclear enzyme that is crucial for the growth and development of thymic epithelial cells.